To any Mac owners...

[Ten10]

Er....... I'd have to get back to you on that one, I only like look at beastly things. The Dell Studio XPS 13 might suit you quite well.

 

Basic specs are Core 2 Duo 2GHZ 3GB ram 250GB HDD Nvidia 9400m slot loading drive HD screen. Due out later this month don't know of any reviews for it yet.

But I don't know if such a small screen would make auto CAD an easy task. I know you can zoom in and out, but I like having more room for these kind of things, so I would say go for 15.4 which in my eyes is still very portable.

 

Whatever path you decide to go for there will still be a way around your problems either way. And some of the mac camp excuses stopped having meaning a long time ago, evident in the epic fail that was their last I'm a Mac I'm a PC advert.

 

Anyway edited my post to show the XPS Studio 13 specs. Near enough a complete replica of the macbook in terms of specs. Studio XPS 13

Edited September 9, 2009 by Ten10

[KKOB]

I must say KKOB and Ten10 are starting to sound like my conscience haha theres that one side telling me to leap over and reap in the rewards where as the other says stick with the same old and (fingers crossed) it eventually improves.

 

So far I know I want a small laptop, preferably 13" so it is ideal to carry about to uni etc. I am also wanting the laptop to last me a good few years until I qualify so would be good to have an extended warranty just incase. Ten10, know of any top notch 13" laptops?

 

On a side note my iPod nano is starting to play up and I have really liked the current ones...heres hoping for another new one to be announced and I can steal a 16gb current gen nano for under £100

 

They've just cut the price of ALL iPods in the US, so same thing here by tomorrow i expect.

 

Well, if you have the money and want a well mac laptop, get a MacBook Pro with the discount, three years etc. If after a few weeks you can't stand OS X (which is very very unlikely) you can always use bootcamp and throw on a copy of XP. Then you have the choice of OS X or Windows on start up.

 

The 13" MacBook Pro hardware is very very sexy! Light up keyboard, ambient light sensor, multi touch trackpad, firewire i/o, built in SD card reader, built in iSight camera and mic, VERY sexy bright display, good Intel Core2Duo processor, latest chipsets really, and it's not at all bulky, it's like an inch thick!

 

You're not shooting yourself in the foot at all with a MacBook Pro and the educational discount. But you're limiting yourself if you go for the cheaper laptops. I spent over £1,150 on my first mac, but i've had it for 2.5 years, it's still an amazing machine, not a single days problem with it. Whereas, all the other PCs in my life seemed to last a year and then have some kind of hardware failure. So for me it's more about VALUE for money, rather than just the price tag. I don't mind paying more if i end up with a computer i'm a lot happier with that will last me for a minimum 3 years.

 

I say minimum because i would like to upgrade to the new unibody design, but the specs in the latest MBPs aren't a big enough jump for me to warrent the upgrade, so i'll probs have this mac for another 2-3 years ^_^

 

 

Additon: 13" MacBook Pro specs, for people suggesting alternatives http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs-13inch.html

Edited September 9, 2009 by KKOB

[Nintendohnut]

Although it probably isn't massively important in your rating of Macs, I got my white MacBook three and a half years ago and although its had a few knocks and bumps its still plenty fast enough and I have no real complaints. As I am also a student, I am planning on getting myself a lovely new iMac at some point in the next few months (anybody know if there will be an update/price drop/new model or anything like that soon?).

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but with a Uni student discount you get something in the region of a 20-25% discount, plus three years Applecare/warranty for free (ie included in that price). As far as I'm concerned that's an excellent deal, especially as the iMac therefore starts at around £800 with that discount.

[Ronnie]

I just recently ordered a new 13" MacBook Pro (with a 2 week delivery wait boooo), and am looking forward to it as it will be my first mac.

 

Most things about OS X I find appealing but am very worried about workflow and usability. Things like not having a 'maximise window' button for instance. Also, nothing can better the windows taskbar in terms of getting quick access to programs.

 

Yes Expose is nice, but it's a bit over the top, when a simple click of the mouse will do in Windows.

 

Still, hopefully it won't be too bad. Everything else I'm looking forward to.

________

Og Kush Marijuana

Edited February 17, 2011 by Ronnie

[KKOB]

I just recently ordered a new 13" MacBook Pro (with a 2 week delivery wait boooo), and am looking forward to it as it will be my first mac.

 

Most things about OS X I find appealing but am very worried about workflow and usability. Things like not having a 'maximise window' button for instance. Also, nothing can better the windows taskbar in terms of getting quick access to programs.

 

Yes Expose is nice, but it's a bit over the top, when a simple click of the mouse will do in Windows.

 

Still, hopefully it won't be too bad. Everything else I'm looking forward to.

 

Erm, the dock is like what the task bar has become in Windows 7 :/ Expose is useful if you have lots of windows of the same app. And if you want to get ti a specific window in the app, just right click the icon in the dock, and click the window you want :/

 

Expose is a very elegant way of seeing all your windows, and very handy for drag and drop between windows and applications, something you can't do on windows.

 

A number of people have spoke to me about the 'lack' of a maximise button. The Expand button (green dot) changes the size of the window to fit the contents of the window, so this is dependant on your screen resolution. You can manually expand a window by dragging the bottom right corner of the windows. And, in some apps which work best in full screen like iPhoto Aperture, iMovie, Garage Band etc the expand button actually expands the window to fill pretty much all of your screen.

 

Having many windows open at once vs just one taking up all the screen space at any one time allows the user to multi task much more effectively. eg. I often have an msn chat window, and twitter on the left of the screen and a browser taking up the rest of the space. YAY for multitasking

[Ronnie]

Erm, the dock is like what the task bar has become in Windows 7 :/ Expose is useful if you have lots of windows of the same app. And if you want to get ti a specific window in the app, just right click the icon in the dock, and click the window you want :/

 

Expose is a very elegant way of seeing all your windows, and very handy for drag and drop between windows and applications, something you can't do on windows.

 

A number of people have spoke to me about the 'lack' of a maximise button. The Expand button (green dot) changes the size of the window to fit the contents of the window, so this is dependant on your screen resolution. You can manually expand a window by dragging the bottom right corner of the windows. And, in some apps which work best in full screen like iPhoto Aperture, iMovie, Garage Band etc the expand button actually expands the window to fill pretty much all of your screen.

 

Having many windows open at once vs just one taking up all the screen space at any one time allows the user to multi task much more effectively. eg. I often have an msn chat window, and twitter on the left of the screen and a browser taking up the rest of the space. YAY for multitasking

 

 

Indeed it is like what the taskbar has become in Windows 7, but the taskbar can still be switched back to the original style, which IMO is far more useful.

 

Expose is quite handy if you have a lot of windows of the same app open, fair enough.

 

You're wrong however when you say that you can't do drag and drop on Windows. You've been able to do that for years, Snow Leopard copied that feature FROM Windows. Drag a file from Explorer to the program in the taskbar, it'll open up and you can use it in the newly active window. Exactly the kind of thing Schiller and other Apple reps have been wankily branding as a 'new great feature'.

 

The lack of maximise is subjective, and people prefer different things. I like being able to double click on the whole top of a window in Windows, and have it fill the screen. I don't want to have to either spend time dragging it to the corner of the screen, or locate this tiny green button in the corner of an OS X window just to have the OS decide how big it should be.

 

Thankfully I read about a little 10kb app that turns the green button into a 'maximise' button, so that's one of the first things I'll be installing.

 

Yes some people might think that having lots of smaller windows improves productivity, but you can do that on Windows as well, just with the added benefit of also allowing users to maximise. Far superior to OS X in that respect.

 

As I said, I'm very impressed with lots that OS X offers, I'm just not at all convinced that workflow and window management is better on Mac.

________

Mazda e platform history

Edited February 17, 2011 by Ronnie

[KKOB]

Indeed it is like what the taskbar has become in Windows 7, but the taskbar can still be switched back to the original style, which IMO is far more useful.

 

Expose is quite handy if you have a lot of windows of the same app open, fair enough.

 

You're wrong however when you say that you can't do drag and drop on Windows. You've been able to do that for years, Snow Leopard copied that feature FROM Windows. Drag a file from Explorer to the program in the taskbar, it'll open up and you can use it in the newly active window. Exactly the kind of thing Schiller and other Apple reps have been wankily branding as a 'new great feature'.

 

The lack of maximise is subjective, and people prefer different things. I like being able to double click on the whole top of a window in Windows, and have it fill the screen. I don't want to have to either spend time dragging it to the corner of the screen, or locate this tiny green button in the corner of an OS X window just to have the OS decide how big it should be.

 

Thankfully I read about a little 10kb app that turns the green button into a 'maximise' button, so that's one of the first things I'll be installing.

 

Yes some people might think that having lots of smaller windows improves productivity, but you can do that on Windows as well, just with the added benefit of also allowing users to maximise. Far superior to OS X in that respect.

 

As I said, I'm very impressed with lots that OS X offers, I'm just not at all convinced that workflow and window management is better on Mac.

 

Erm, no. The drag and drop thing i was talking about was more to do with dragging a picture from a web browser straight into an open word document etc. Not merely opening up a file in a certain app :/

 

And OS X has been able to do it for years as well, this 'selective drag and drop' has been round since before i joined the mac world with OS X 10.4 Tiger. The 'new feature' in Snow Leopard is a refinement of Expose called Dock expose.

 

It's hardley 'far superior' if the mac has a lil script etc that can modulate a buttons function, and the green dot is not much smaller than the maximise square on windows :/

 

Play about with things like the new Expose, then try pressing tab while in expose, use dock expose. And use Spaces to have different environments on the same mac. This is superior to the 'out of the box' feature list of windows i think.

[Ashley]

Correct me if I'm wrong but with a Uni student discount you get something in the region of a 20-25% discount, plus three years Applecare/warranty for free (ie included in that price). As far as I'm concerned that's an excellent deal, especially as the iMac therefore starts at around £800 with that discount.

 

I believe its 15% if you order it from a campus computer. Plus yeah, the applecare.

 

If you do get a mac here's a tip; to use a hash press alt+3. Its a tricky bastard because its hidden

[PeeJ]

See I really don't mind forking out over £1000 on a laptop as long as I know it is going to last a good few years and will still be quite competitive with the spec. I understand if I buy say a £400 laptop more than likely it will be completely out of date come Christmas/early 2010.

 

Do you really get the 3 years apple care for free? I read it was like £200

 

Proberly the best for me to do is to take my laptop into an Apple Store and have a chat with one of the advisers to see if they can answer questions about some of my software. I wouldn't mind if only the occasional software needs to use Windows as thats what boot camp is for.

 

Also KKOB do you know how good the 13" Macbook Pros are with games like Sims 3 or WoW? I know both aren't that demanding.

 

To answer questions on discounts, I am in uni on Friday so I will log onto a computer and check

[Ashley]

Do you really get the 3 years apple care for free? I read it was like £200

 

Yup. I bought mine around June 2007 and took it in to be fixed when the power button stopped working around December-January 2008/9 and it was still covered.

[KKOB]

Yup. I bought mine around June 2007 and took it in to be fixed when the power button stopped working around December-January 2008/9 and it was still covered.

 

You need to BUY Apple care to extend the warrenty to 3 years from the normal 12 months.

 

Normal price of Apple Care for an iMac say is about £260. Students get it for about £55.

 

MASSIVE saving.

 

My mac is still a damn good computer, it's going on three years old. Like i said, i plan to use it for next 2-3 years as well Still plays WoW great

[Ashley]

You need to BUY Apple care to extend the warrenty to 3 years from the normal 12 months.

 

Normal price of Apple Care for an iMac say is about £260. Students get it for about £55.

 

MASSIVE saving.

 

My mac is still a damn good computer, it's going on three years old. Like i said, i plan to use it for next 2-3 years as well Still plays WoW great

 

I never did and it got fixed after the initial 12 month period.

[PeeJ]

I know one thing...if I am going to bug a mac it will be before I qualify otherwise I would be throwing money away.

 

I wonder if anyone knows of any Windows 13" laptops with similar specs for a lot cheaper than the 13" Macbook Pro?

[KKOB]

I know one thing...if I am going to bug a mac it will be before I qualify otherwise I would be throwing money away.

 

I wonder if anyone knows of any Windows 13" laptops with similar specs for a lot cheaper than the 13" Macbook Pro?

 

Be brave and try something different, or stay with the same old same old. In this case "better the devil you know" doesn't apply.

[PeeJ]

Be brave and try something different, or stay with the same old same old. In this case "better the devil you know" doesn't apply.

 

Right now the only thing stopping me from taking your advice is what programs work on Mac.

 

However from what I have found out most of my programs do work which is making me want to move.

 

The only thing holding me back is really Windows 7...is it as good as Mac OSX? I don't even know if anyone will know yet

[KKOB]

Right now the only thing stopping me from taking your advice is what programs work on Mac.

 

However from what I have found out most of my programs do work which is making me want to move.

 

The only thing holding me back is really Windows 7...is it as good as Mac OSX? I don't even know if anyone will know yet

 

People will know due to the release candidate being made available by M$.

 

It's the best version of windows, with some good UI updates and about time too. Still, according to all the critics OS X is still the best operating system in the world for most people.

 

I've just installed XP on my moms iMac after nearl 3 years of being OS X only. Using Bootcamp on the mac was effortless, and made everything really easy. So i now have the choice to boot into Snow Leopard or XP on the iMac. So, at worst, you'll have a kick ass laptop which has the choice of runing either OS X or XP/Vista as you see fit.

 

Yay for choice. I will also say that going back to XP is horrible, and a bit like being stuck in the 70s.

[Ramar]

6pm our time i believe, check gizmodo et al for live blogging goodness.

 

My betting is, they HAVE to do something beatles related :/ why the fuck else would they have it on 9/9/09 when normally their PCs are on a Tuesday?!

 

New ipods, cheaper touch, iTunes 9 and maybe some app store changes i think. nothing earth shattering but i hope iTunes 9 will be pushed out tonight.

 

Nice one, cheers dude. I heard about possible camera going on the iPod touch, also with the beatles theme apparently they're going to announce the release of the beatles back catalogue which we all know theres been grief over.

[Ronnie]

Erm, no. The drag and drop thing i was talking about was more to do with dragging a picture from a web browser straight into an open word document etc. Not merely opening up a file in a certain app :/

 

And OS X has been able to do it for years as well, this 'selective drag and drop' has been round since before i joined the mac world with OS X 10.4 Tiger. The 'new feature' in Snow Leopard is a refinement of Expose called Dock expose.

 

It's hardley 'far superior' if the mac has a lil script etc that can modulate a buttons function, and the green dot is not much smaller than the maximise square on windows :/

 

Play about with things like the new Expose, then try pressing tab while in expose, use dock expose. And use Spaces to have different environments on the same mac. This is superior to the 'out of the box' feature list of windows i think.

 

Thanks for your thoughts but next time leave out the condescending/patronising Apple fanboy attitude. No need for the likes of "Erm, no." - I'll have a play around with expose and spaces, perhaps they'll be godsends, but I don't see how they're any easier to use than what's on Windows. They just look pretty and amount to more clicks. We'll see though.

 

It's hardley 'far superior' if the mac has a lil script etc that can modulate a buttons function, and the green dot is not much smaller than the maximise square on windows :/

 

It is because it's not originally built into OS X. You shouldn't have to rely on a 3rd party app. And Windows users let you click on the whole top bar to maximise, another case of usability being better than the equivalent on OS X.

________

FREE VAPORIZER

Edited February 17, 2011 by Ronnie

[peterl0]

Just read all the details from the Apple show!

That was a bit disappointing wasn't it?

Could almost have been a Nintendo E3 conference.

 

[McPhee]

It's all about preference. If you like upgrading your hardware, high end gaming etc and are happy dealing with the windows annoyances of viruses etc, disk defrag, firewalls, adware etc then you'll be happy with a windows pc. And windows 7 does look like a decent update of XP after the abortion known as vista. But if you're bored of waiting for your computer to scan for things, and want it to just work for you, then it'll be more than worth trying out a mac. It IS different, but once you get over the initial alien feeling it's great and more than worth the extra money in my opinion, and from what i've been told the opinion of more than ten other people who i've influenced into buying a mac.

 

I don't get anything out of there being more mac users, i just think it's a genuinely better way of living your digital life is all.

 

After the recent improvements in Vista and Windows 7 I wouldn't really say the worries you posted about Windows are all that relevant. They certainly aren't to me anyway, I don't have an AV running (i do a scan twice a year and haven't had any problems since moving from XP to Vista), I use Windows Firewall, I've not defragged my hard drives in ages (just done a scan and I'm up to 18% fragmentation which is no big deal) and I've not had a crash caused by Windows in a long time (I've caused plenty myself though from fiddling with BIOS settings and hardware). Microsoft do have a bit of work to do on the adware front though. I've not had any harmful adware infect my computer since I left XP but Spybot does still pick up the odd thing here and there.

 

From a stability and maintenance point of view I can't really see much in it. Both operating systems are perfectly capable of surviving alone without any 3rd party software installed. If anything OS X probably copes a little better, counterbalanced by better 3rd party software support on Windows.

 

Even Apple's old ace in the hole, iLife, isn't as much of a selling point as it used to be. Microsoft have their own very similar package in Windows Live Essentials, the only thing missing is a Garage Band alternative.

 

The Macbook Pro is a cracking choice of laptop but personally I think it has far better plus points than the fact it runs OS X, it's an alternative OS these days rather than a superior one.

 

Erm, no. The drag and drop thing i was talking about was more to do with dragging a picture from a web browser straight into an open word document etc. Not merely opening up a file in a certain app :/

 

You can do that. If I open (for example) Live Picture Gallery and grab a photo i can drag it in to Paint, Word or any number of other programs. I can even do it without the program being open, just drag it on to the icon.

 

Not being able to do it from a browser is just down to that browser lacking that feature. I'm using Chrome at the moment which won't do it.

 

according to all the critics OS X is still the best operating system in the world for most people.

 

Which critics do those be then? I'd honestly like to know, it's always good to get a bit more perspective and some times people notice things that others don't. Most reviews I've been reading on Snow Leopard and Windows 7 put them both at an even level (which from my experiences with Leopard and Windows 7 I can definitely believe). It's less a case of which one is better and more a case of which one you prefer. I know that I feel lost in OS X and I find my productivity falls due to the keyboard shortcuts being different. From my own experiences I know I could likely learn to love OS X (and I certainly wouldn't mind running it on my own machines so I could get more used to it) but I don't really think I have any need to when I already get on fine with Windows.

[PeeJ]

Just read all the details from the Apple show!

That was a bit disappointing wasn't it?

Could almost have been a Nintendo E3 conference.

 

 

I agree, was really looking for something like HUGE and then we got hit with our iPhone/Touch has more games than DS and PSP then followed by the "big revelation" that the nano now has a video camera....call me disappointed

 

On topic though I have been doing some digging and I am wondering if someone would be kind enough to explain the main benefits of Windows 7 over Vista as personally I have never had one problem with Vista.

[McPhee]

On topic though I have been doing some digging and I am wondering if someone would be kind enough to explain the main benefits of Windows 7 over Vista as personally I have never had one problem with Vista.

 

I never had a problem with Vista either really, I always thought the positives outweighed the negatives (after I got rid of my old laptop, which was a bit slow and had too little RAM to run Vista properly).

 

Aside from the UI upgrades Windows 7 isn't a huge leap from Vista. All they really did was tweak the performance to make it run smoother, tie UAC back to a point where people will stop bitching about it and then add a few new features like native SSD support, Playto and Sendto. There's also better networking support in the form of Homegroups.

 

As for Windows laptop suggestions, try the Dell Studio XPS 13 and Adamo, Sony TT and TZ and the Lenovo T400. Of those the two Dells are 13" models, the two Sonys are 11" models and the Lenovo is 14".

Edited September 9, 2009 by McPhee

[KKOB]

Can't be arsed to get involved with arguind here. I've given advice, and answered questions and now i take my leave to go and play with iTunes 9.

[Ramar]

Just read all the details from the Apple show!

That was a bit disappointing wasn't it?

Could almost have been a Nintendo E3 conference.

 

 

Slightly disappointed but the drop in price for the Touch is welcomed, just got to decide whether to buy one in America or get an iPhone when I get home.

[That Guy]

Completely agree with KKOB on here. I use Windows more than I use OS X, still using XP at work. I find it really annoying, slow and a pain and actually find OS X a joy to use. I really couldn't go back, and I really had to think about it at the time. I think I bought my Macbook a month or so before KKOB did, so I've been using it for 3 years now. It still seems fast and much better than the 2 laptops my parents have had in the last couple of years.

 

The Dock, Expose, and Spaces are my favourite features of OS X, as well as never having needed Anti Virus, never having to use system tools to tidy up/defrag, iLife is excellent as well, and never needing to manually install a printer. That was a wonderful moment when the printer just worked!

 

I've had a couple of minor hardware problems, mostly just my screen flickering a bit for a couple of minutes from time to time, but nothing that has made me even think about moving back to PC.

 

If you can get the programs to work on OS X then I couldn't recommend switching enough.

 

One last thing, don't look at specs. If someone handed you a Macbook and a Dell, it's extremely likely the Macbook would start up faster. If you didn't know the specs of these things you would never feel as if you were paying more money for less hardware.